Chapter One
Ben raced through the Resistance base, full of boyish energy. He stopped outside Rey's door and tapped on it with one hand, then the other. His feet moved up and down impatiently, and after a moment of silence he called out to her. "Rey Solo Dameron Tico Organa Skywalker!"
The names were a bit of a running joke. It had all started a week or two ago. The weather had been especially beautiful that day, even for Ajan Kloss, and the planet's slight axis tilt meant that the days were getting a little cooler and night was coming earlier. Rey and her friends had decided to ditch the Resistance dining hall for views of the beginning sunset, and Rey, Poe, Finn, Rose, and Ben had hiked to the top of a bluff overlooking the camp, picnic filched from the kitchen in hand. Someone, Rose perhaps, had asked Ben about his family names, because he did have a lot of them—Solo, Skywalker, Organa, Amidala—and Rey had gotten that far away look in her eyes, and Ben knew she was thinking about being assigned a name that wasn't hers.
"You okay, Rey?" Finn asked.
"I wish I had a surname that wasn't associated with basically all the suffering in the galaxy," she said bitterly.
Maybe it was the way the sun glowed on her loose strands of hair. Maybe it was the way her friends had taken to him as if he were one of their own, but Ben was feeling particularly bold that evening. He raised his brows, looking sideways at Rey. "You can have mine."
Rose, it seemed, had not picked up on Ben's not-so-subtle flirtation, because she piped up, "that's a good idea! Mine too!"
And Poe had chuckled and added, "and mine."
Rey was looking down and blushing, fighting with the biggest smile Ben had seen. The smile was winning.
It was a perfect moment, until Finn had turned to Poe and said, "you know, I don't have a last name either," and Ben had to leap up and catch Finn because Poe had almost pushed him off the cliff.
Even now, the memory made Ben smile. Since then, he'd just stuck another one of his family names onto Rey's every time she claimed she didn't have a family.
And yet, somewhere below the laughter and the relief, an undercurrent of anxiety ran through the Resistance. The Sith, the First Order, the Final Order had all been defeated. Still, Ben didn't like that only four bodies had been recovered of the Knights of Ren.
Rey opened the door to her room, erasing all other thoughts from Ben's mind. Her hair hung down around her shoulders and Ben could see pieces of her half-disassembled staff scattered in a semicircle around where she had been sitting.
"Hey," she said, leaning against the doorframe.
"Hey." He lifted her off her feet, spinning her around in a circle and setting her down to take her face in his hands and press his lips firmly against hers.
"Someone's in a good mood this morning," Rey said breathlessly as he broke away from her. Her hazel eyes glowed up at him.
"I've been wanting to do that," Ben admitted, grinning. "Prosthetic came in today."
"Stars' end, I almost didn't notice!" Rey exclaimed. She pulled Ben's left hand from her cheek and turned it over in her fingers. It looked nearly identical to his right. Rey traced the creases in Ben's new palm with a fingertip. "You can feel that?"
"All of it," Ben smiled.
"I'm…I'm glad they did such a good job," Rey said looking away, growing distant. Ben could feel the tinge of guilt on her.
"Hey, you know what this means?" Ben asked.
Rey's eyes shot back to his. "We can go!"
"We can go! I'm ready whenever you are."
"I'm ready. I just have to put my hair up and grab my things."
"You have everything?" Ben pressed.
"Yes."
"Power cell?"
"Yes."
"Emitter matrix?"
"We've been over this, Ben. I know what goes into a lightsaber." Rey pushed his chest playfully and headed back into her chamber.
"Rey?"
She looked over her shoulder at him. "Yes?"
"Can I do your hair?"
Her brows furrowed. "Since when do you know how to do hair?"
"It's been a while," Ben confessed. "But you don't grow up with Leia without learning some basics."
Rey sat in front of Ben on her bed as his fingers wove through her silky hair. Even after these weeks, he could hardly believe that this was his reality. What had he ever seen in the Dark, when all this time, he could have been here? He tied back the last swoop of hair, then leaned down to swiftly kiss the spot where Rey's neck and shoulders came together.
"What do you think?" he asked.
It was her usual triple-bun hairstyle, though slightly more complex. Ben had picked up hair from around her face and braided it back before sweeping the braids into her first two buns. Less likely to come undone that way, he thought. He had, of course, left the curls that fell in front of her ears loose.
"I love it, Ben." He knew Rey's response was automatic—she'd hardly had a chance to look at her hair, and for some reason that made his heart flutter.
They raced each other for the Falcon, and Ben had never been so happy to run in his life. Chewie growled at them as they crossed the open space in the middle of the base.
"Yes, of course we'll bring it back!" Rey shot back at the Wookiee. "And it won't be on fire this time!"
Ben heard a muffled "hey!" from somewhere further off. It sounded like Poe.
Rey takes the pilot's seat!
Ben rolled his eyes. "Yes, Chewie."
He and Rey boarded the ship. They lifted out of the jungle and jumped to lightspeed.
Rey brought the Falcon down gently into a clearing in the forests of Lothal. It was the first stop on their several-day expedition. Rey fingered the strap of the bag thrown over her seat. Inside were three lightsabers. Rey itched to be rid of them—particularly the one she had built on Exegol. She had killed with that saber, struck down Resistance members, even injured her friends. Rose thought the scars made her look tough. To others they probably did, Rey thought, but to her they just screamed at her guilt. She was glad, at least, that the scar over Ben's eye had healed. She wasn't sure what she would do if she met remnants of injuries she had caused at every turn. Exactly why she wanted to ditch the lightsaber, she thought. But Ben was right. Without the sabers, the duo was defenseless. Well, more or less. They had blasters, they had the Force, but Rey knew Ben had been lucky to get off Exegol alive after launching his weapon into the sea.
And then there were the Skywalker sabers. Leia's had seen little action, but what it had had been grisly. Rey felt that Ben wanted the blade with which he had pierced her chest as far away as possible. And if Leia had foreseen Ben's death at the end of the saber's path, well, Rey certainly didn't disagree with Ben's thinking. And Luke's—Anakin's, really, Ben had informed her—had been fighting for decades. It was time to lay them to rest, time to start over. But they couldn't go out into the galaxy defenseless.
Rey threw a satchel of lightsaber parts over her shoulder and swung out of her chair. Her hand fell into Ben's as the two silently descended the Falcon's ramp. Rey inhaled deeply. The air of Lothal was fresh and damp. Despite the clear sky, it smelled like distant rain. Rey decided she definitely liked the place. But they were here for a reason, so leaning against Ben's shoulder, she sank into the Force to feel for a crystal. Sensing Ben's radiant presence next to her would never get old, Rey decided.
Focus, he teased, nudging her away from him.
So Rey reached, and almost immediately felt a tug. They had set down near a tectonic fault line—an area where kyber crystals occurred more frequently—so Rey wasn't surprised to feel something so soon. What did startle her was the intensity of the pull—it was similar to the way the Force drew her toward Ben when they were apart.
"Feel something?" Ben asked.
Rey nodded. "I didn't expect it to be this strong."
"Most Jedi are Force bonded to their crystals," Ben explained.
So that was why Rey felt like the Force was pulling her in two directions at once. She realized she had stepped forward without thinking about it. Her legs were taking her to the crystal whether she wanted to go or not. Fortunately Ben began to move in the same direction, and Rey regained purpose in her steps.
Rey's ears began to pick up a faint melody. She couldn't quite distinguish the notes at first, but as she walked they strengthened. It was somehow lonely and playful at once, evoking the familiar feeling of an echoing, unanswered call across the desert.
"Do you hear…music?" Rey asked.
"Yeah. It's the crystals." Right. Rey remembered reading about this. Ben hummed several phrases, and though the melody was quite distinct from hers, Rey recognized a few notes. "What's yours sound like?"
Rey shook her head. "My voice wouldn't do it justice."
They walked together for some time before Ben's course started to veer from Rey's. He squeezed her hand and then headed off, and Rey was alone. Well, she considered, maybe not quite alone. The melody felt alive in her ears and mind and soul, and the way the notes swelled with power told her she was close.
Rey came to a stream, burbling quickly away from the jagged cliffs that rose over the clearing where they had left the Falcon. The water was very clear, running shallowly over colorful pebbles. Rey allowed herself to stop for a moment, tugging off her boots and taking them in one hand as she stepped into the brook. The cool water and smooth stones felt blissful on her feet. She could feel that the crystal was close, further upstream, so she walked against the gentle current, feet splashing in the few inches of water.
Rey's path ended abruptly in a smooth cliff face, spray tumbling over its side. Mosses and ferns had grown up around the water source, and jagged debris piled at the base of the little falls. Here. It was here.
Rey picked her way over the jagged stones, wincing as her foot came down uncomfortably on one's edge. She found a stable enough place to set her knees and knelt under the falls. Droplets of water sprayed over her, but the coolness was surprisingly bearable. Rey dug through the rubble, carefully lifting rocks away. She almost could have been scavenging the Jakku battlefield again, if not for the spray in her hair running in rivulets down her face and neck. She picked several clear crystals out and set them aside—it didn't feel right to toss them into the growing pile of dislocated rocks—but her gut told her none of them were what she was looking for. She wasn't even sure if they were Kyber.
Then Rey's hand grazed warm ridges, and she withdrew a small, neatly faceted crystal. Despite the cool stream water, it was warm in her palm and pulsated with faint white light. The music ended suddenly with a final humming note, and Rey closed her fist around the crystal.
Author's Note: Hey all! If you're new here, I'd suggest reading my fic Binary Sunrise before continuing with this one (although you could probably get plenty out of Across the Stars without the context of a prequel, I don't know). Anyway, welcome to this high-stakes space roadtrip!
Also, if anyone's curious, I'm imagining the Kyber crystal melodies that Ben and Rey hear as their character themes.